- Chief Compliance Officer and VP of Legal Affairs, Arrow Electronics
By 
Neil Hodge2021-03-11T16:12:00
Since the GDPR came into force in 2018, Big Tech firms have not been on the receiving end of fines as frequently as expected. Meanwhile, other industries have shown to be more prone to data privacy violations, namely telecommunications.
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The Hellenic Data Protection Authority fined mobile phone operator Cosmote and its parent company OTE a total of €9.25 million (U.S. $10.6 million) for a data breach caused by a September 2020 cyberattack and for illegally processing customer data.
Sky Italia was ordered to pay nearly €3.3 million (U.S. $3.8 million) by Italy’s data protection authority Garante for allegedly misusing customer data to make unwanted promotional phone calls.
Experts believe the GDPR is largely “future-proof,” though fine decisions that vary considerably from one EU country to the next and lack of transparency remain areas of concern for the privacy law three years in.
It has been four years since the European Union’s flagship data privacy legislation came into force, but concerns are already being raised about whether the General Data Protection Regulation is being outpaced by technological developments and their use of data.
So far, Europe’s wide-reaching data privacy rules have seemingly failed to curb Big Tech firms’ use and abuse of citizens’ personal data. As a result, some EU data regulators are pursuing their own investigations—often through other legislation.
Belgian Data Protection Authority head David Stevens and Member of European Parliament Axel Voss discussed ways the General Data Protection Regulation could be improved for the future during a keynote at CW’s virtual Europe event.
